Season of Discovery Arcane Mage Healer Guide

Last updated on Jul 10, 2024 at 03:00 by Seksixeny 9 comments

Welcome to our Arcane Mage Healer guide for WoW Classic - Season of Discovery, tailored for PvE content. Here, you will learn how to play the Mage class as an Arcane Mage Healer. Click the links below to navigate the guide or read this page for a short introduction.

1.

Overview

Mages have traditionally dealt high damage with their slow, but powerful high cast time spells, supported by strong damage increasing talents while also having great utility with Frost Nova Icon Frost Nova, Polymorph Icon Polymorph, and Blink Icon Blink, among other support spells.

They have great convenience tools, such as Teleport: Stormwind Icon Teleport: Stormwind, Portal: Stormwind Icon Portal: Stormwind, Conjure Water Icon Conjure Water, Conjure Food Icon Conjure Food, and can now also resurrect with the new consumable Scroll of Reintegration Icon Scroll of Reintegration.

Something Mage could never do in World of Warcraft is heal, and that is finally changing in Season of Discovery, with the new rune system bringing Regeneration Icon Regeneration, Mass Regeneration Icon Mass Regeneration and the new Temporal Beacon Icon Temporal Beacon mechanic!

Unfortunately, the lack of sustained slowing effects and reliance on long cast times makes Arcane a weak PvP option for Mage, although you can find some success against light pressure with self healing and the new damage to healing Temporal Beacon Icon Temporal Beacon mechanic applied by your heals!

Strengths icon Strengths
  • +Arcane Healer has an easy time gearing as all caster stats are useful
  • +Easy to change between pure Arcane damage and healer with just rune swaps
  • +Highest DPS out of all healers by a large margin while still doing good healing if Temporal Beacon Icon Temporal Beacon is well managed
Weaknesses icon Weaknesses
  • -High Mana issues in general, especially if Evocation Icon Evocation is not available
  • -Damage is much lower than what a pure DPS would be able to do, especially in single target
  • -Direct heals are weak for their Mana cost and Temporal Beacon Icon Temporal Beacon mechanic requires setup time
2.

Season of Discovery

By combining Runes and Arcane damage, Mages in Season of Discovery are finally viable healers due to the introduction of Regeneration Icon Regeneration and Mass Regeneration Icon Mass Regeneration! They also have excellent area damage with Arcane Explosion Icon Arcane Explosion, and benefit from great early talents such as Arcane Focus Icon Arcane Focus.

Most of your healing comes from the Temporal Beacon Icon Temporal Beacon mechanic, which causes a part of your damage to heal targets recently healed by Regeneration Icon Regeneration and Mass Regeneration Icon Mass Regeneration, thus incentivizing you to deal damage in order to heal, which is a completely new mechanic in WoW Classic!

Most of that damage comes from Balefire Bolt Icon Balefire Bolt, Arcane Blast Icon Arcane Blast and Missile Barrage Icon Missile Barrage procs, with the occasional Chronostatic Preservation Icon Chronostatic Preservation for burst healing, passive Spell Power Icon Spell Power for larger critical strikes, and new Temporal Anomaly Icon Temporal Anomaly for area shields.

The combination of healing, damage, and powerful crowd control makes the new Arcane a jack of all trades, and the only healing specialization that can swap into a full DPS with just Rune swaps. As the same talents can be used for both healing and DPSing, Arcane Mages have unmatched versatility in the swing healer role.

As a completely new role for Mage, the rotation, gearing options, and talent decisions for the Healer Mage will be perfected and adjusted as we go through the content, so make sure to keep checking the guides in the Table of Content at the top of this page for updates over time!

2.1.

Profession Changes

Healer Mages will still want to take Engineering, but with more of an emphasis on Tailoring rather than Mining. Tailoring is especially powerful in Season of Discovery due to special bind on pickup crafts such as Gneuro-Linked Arcano-Filament Monocle  Icon Gneuro-Linked Arcano-Filament Monocle and Fractured Mind Pauldrons  Icon Fractured Mind Pauldrons, of which we expect there will be more of in the future!

2.2.

Rune Engravings

The main feature of Season of Discovery is the new Rune Discovery system, which allows you to discover and attach special abilities to your gear slots after finding them across the world. We list all of Mage's runes and where they can be located in the guide below:

3.

Changelog

  • 10 Jul. 2024: Updated for Phase 4.
  • 02 Apr. 2024: Updated introduction for Phase 3.
  • 15 Feb. 2024: Updated introduction for Phase 2.
  • 15 Dec. 2023: Removed mention of portals as they are beyond level 25.
  • 09 Dec. 2023: Typo fix with Regeneration icon.
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